Which Language?

Island boys hiding from waves

For those of you that have learned to speak another language— you know it is not always easy. But you might also know that not all circumstances are equal. Just because you can have a conversation with your best friend in the new language, doesn’t mean you can talk with anyone easily. Just because you can get around town, doesn’t mean you can follow a conversation of native speakers when they talk at full speed and throwing in expressions and slang. Then there are vocabulary gaps. You may be able to talk about everyday life and the news of the town, but someone starts talking to you about agriculture and you find you don’t have the word bank to have a conversation.  Some areas of difficulty are common among language learners— for example, talking on the phone is usually considered more difficult than normal conversation because you don’t have the visual cues or hand motions to aid understanding.

Another problem area is prayer.

Indeed we’ve known people that are perfectly fluent in a foreign language, able to handle any conversation or situation, but seem daunted by the idea of praying in that language.  This came to our minds recently with the memorial service for Megan’s grandad. It is customary for these events to be opened and closed with prayer and usually the host honors certain guests by asking them to pray.  Our options of who to ask were limited.  We wanted it to be people who shared our beliefs but who were also older and respected. Also for cultural reasons it needed to be men. Unfortunately two of our more obvious choices were traveling when we had the service.

Kids almost getting washed away

A handful of men came early and Tom approached them and asked two of the them if they would pray to open and close, but here was the one condition— we wanted them to do it in the local language. One of the men immediately refused. He couldn’t do it. He has lived in the country for a decade, he is married to an islander, they speak the local language at home with their kids and he speaks it well.  His mother tongue is even fairly close to the local language, but still he wasn’t comfortable. He only prays in his mother tongue.  He couldn’t be persuaded so Tom asked someone else to open the memorial.

The second person Tom asked to close the ceremony was also uncomfortable about praying in the local language, but the situation was completely different. He is an islander. The local language is his mother tongue.  The problem is that he learned to pray from foreigners many years ago, and even after all these years, he still only usually prays in French. We struggle to have a conversation with him about deeper things without him switching to French. It’s like he just doesn’t have the words in his mother tongue to talk about these important things. Tom asked him to pray and challenged him to do it in the local language. “I don’t know if I can do it, but I’ll try,” he said (in French).

We can understand some of this struggle. Prayer is personal. Generally we would expect people to cling to their mother tongues in prayer. We were pushed early on to learn to pray in the local language and we are grateful for that push, because we probably wouldn’t have learned otherwise.  But even with this push it is true that our prayers in the local language are still much more stilted than when we pray in English. In our mother tongue we can let go and have the prayers flow out of us. In a foreign language we often have to think carefully about what we are saying. But practice helps!

Low tide

Sometimes we are torn. Praying in your mother tongue is important. Islanders often feel like the prayers in Arabic are better or more effective. We disagree and feel like we can each approach God in our own language. When we have multilingual gatherings with other expats, the common language is often English but we invite people to pray in their own languages . Partially we feel bad if everyone is expected to pray in English because while  we are praying in our mother tongue, everyone else is being forced to pray in a foreign tongue. At the same time while we are with islanders, we try to pray in the local language, partially to show deference and to honor the local language, and to get rid of any idea of some languages being superior to others, but also because we want people to understand our prayers. We want them to be able to join in and pray with us.  It can be beautiful to listen and to let prayers in an unknown tongue wash over you, but it is also wonderful to at least have a sense of what is being prayed.

At the end of memorial our friend did a wonderful job of praying in the local language. He may have been uncomfortable but he did a beautiful job of tying together different things that were expressed throughout the memorial in his prayer. One of those in attendance said later how much they appreciated our friend’s prayer.  We hope it will be an encouragement to him to keep trying.  It is a blessing to pray in any language, especially your own.

PRAYERS ANSWERED
We’ve had many positive responses to the memorial service.  It seems everyone who we’ve talked to has expressed their appreciation for it.  Tom finally seems to be recovered and is thankful for feeling healthy again.  We took a small retreat together as a team this past weekend (where pics were taken) to think about our goals and to rest and bond as a team.  It went really well with many answered prayers around travel, good team time, and clear goals.  We’re thankful for a sister from the little island who turns out is living nearby to us and who has been able to connect with some of our other brothers and sisters.

PRAYERS REQUESTED
Our team is looking into getting a computer for team-use to increase the number of people that could be involved in the language project. We are excited about the idea but buying quality electronics from the islands can be difficult. Pray that we’d be patient while we work out these logistics. Pray for our team as we try to clarify the big goal we brainstormed on our weekend retreat and that they wouldn’t be just our plans but His. We haven’t had word from our friend about his passport renewal, pray that the process is going quickly. 

***IMMEDIATE CONCERN: As we were finishing the blog, there was a fire in our neighborhood. We’ve heard reports that two children were badly burned. Tom saw at least one child being carried out whose whole body appeared to be burned. We have seen lots of people crying and wailing in grief. We don’t know much and don't know if the child(ren) will survive, but please pray for this family and all those effected and for the children for miraculous healing to occur.